A characterization of the data, including its intended use and limitations.

Abstract:

Weed presence in Idaho, consolidated from datasets provided by BLM Boise District, BLM Twin Falls District, BLM Idaho Falls District, BLM Coeur d'Alene District, and the Idaho Department of Agriculture, from December 2005.
Many errors noted. Users must review attributes before using. No corrections to any errors or inconsistencies have been made. See supplementary information.

Approved by data steward 10/15/2008
Truncation of attributes may have occurred when File Geodatabase exported to a shapfile.
Draft standards such as genus/species exist in the database design, but were not used. Some fields such as National ownership, local ownership, and source are inconsistently or incorrectly used. The draft standards provided for multiple weed listing in different attribute fields, but multiple weeds were sometimes concatenated into the same attribute (whitetop/hoary cress, cheatgrass/medusahead).
Only common names used to identify plant. These include typos, potential multiple references to the same plant (including abbreviations), placenames where the plant was found instead of the plant name, incomplete reference making it difficult to determine which weed was meant, and plants that are not listed as weeds http://plants.usda.gov. Many of the errors with the common name field are due to how the data was compiled, but some exist with the source data.
All records are coded as "BLM" for the source data, but approximately 30% of the records are from the Idaho Department of Agriculture. About 8% of the records from the BLM Idaho Falls District were probably provided by the US Forest Service.
Source Data:
Source data included point, line, and polygons. It includes weed survey/inventories as well as treatment to remove weeds. Points and lines were buffered by a minimal distance to convert them to polygons so that they could be appended to polygon data. This can make it difficult to display/query data. The buffer distance was not identified, but seems to be approximately 0.1 meters. Metadata may or may not exist for the source data.
BLM Boise District weeds treatment point data 1996-2004. Fields included site-id, weed common name, treatment type (biologic, chemical, mechanical, chemical-mechanical, and no), treatment year, treatment acreage.
BLM Twin Falls District Cheatgrass and Medusahead infested areas from covertypes used in Fire Management Planning, 2003. Metadata.
BLM Challis Field Office:
Cheatgrass inventory
Weed Inventory
Weed Treatment polygon - Treatment Year, Weed, application
Weed Treatment point - many of the points are not represented in the compiled data.
Weed Treatment areas Salmon-Challis NF (?), mostly along rivers & roads.
BLM Salmon Field Office:
Biological Control point data. Data not represented in compiled data. Metadata
Weed Inventory points, lines, and polygons. Metadata.
BLM Cottonwood Field Office. 3 point treatment layers, 3 polygon treatment layers. Spraying_2004_24k2.shp was incorrectly compiled into this dataset. The weed_target field should have been used, not the name field which is a placename.
Idaho Department of Agriculture 2002-2005. Source includes 2005 polygon inventory data as well as PLSS section summaries for each weed by year. No metadata. It is unclear if all source data was used. Overlap spatially and temporally by different weed species, and precision of data collection may make the data difficult to display/query. Original data indicate numerous weed species in each PLSS section, but the compiled data only list one weed species per section.

Dataset credit:

Bureau of Land Managment, Idaho; Idaho Department of Agriculture

Language of dataset: en

Point Of Contact

Contact information for the individual or organization that is knowledgeable about the data.

Organization: Bureau of Land Management, Idaho State Office

Position: Geographic Sciences

Phone: 208-373-4000

Fax: 208-373-3949

Hours of service: 8-$;#0, M-F, MST

Address type: mailing and physical address

Address:

BLM, Idaho State Office

Address:

1387 S. Vinnell Way

City: Boise

State or Province: ID

Postal code: 83709

County: USA

Data Type

How the data are represented, formatted and maintained by the data producing organization.

The geographic areal domain of the data that describes the western, eastern, northern, and southern geographic limits of data coverage.

Bounding Coordinates

In Projected or local coordinates

NAD 1983 UTM Zone 11N

Boundary

Coordinate

Left

478381.177800 (meters)

Right

990426.767100 (meters)

Top

5427403.728700 (meters)

Bottom

4645912.102500 (meters)

In Unprojected coordinates (geographic)

GCS North American 1983

Boundary

Coordinate

West

-117.295566 (longitude)

East

-110.318857 (longitude)

North

48.999532 (latitude)

South

41.813197 (latitude)

Data Structure and Attribute Information

Overview

Summary of the information content of the data, including other references to complete descriptions of entity types, attributes, and attribute values for the data.

Dataset overview:

Contains consolidated weeds datasets from various field offices and the Idaho Department of Agriculture.

Entity and attribute overview:

Attributes include Draft National Standards, as well as fields from orginal source data. Fields for Draft National Standards are usually empty. Draft National standards include: CollectionData, Genus, Species, species2, species3, Commonname, plantcode, InfestedAreaAcreage, GrossAreaAcreage, CanopyCover, NationalOwnership, LocalOwnership, DataSource, AreaSurveyedAcreage, SurveyType, DateSurveyCompleted.
There are numerous "local source fields". Most of the fields from contributing data have been appended to the attribute field and only apply to certian records. These attributes are useful in identifying the source of the data as well as verifying what data was compiled. Contributing source data fields sometimes have suffix to identify source, but not always. Local source contributing fields can be identified by viwing the source definition for a particular attribute.

Entity and attribute detailed citation:

InfestedAreaAcreage - unknown how calculated. Only 31% or the records have information, 98% of these are from the Idaho Department of Agriculture.
GrossAreaAcreage - unknown how calculated
CanopyCover - Unknown how calculated
Nationalownership - all coded as "BLM", including State, private, and USFS managed lands
Localownership - does not reflect who manages the land
Datasource - all coded as 'BLM", but many are from the Idaho Department of Agriculture and some are probably from the Salmon-Challis NF.

Direct spatial reference method: Vector

Attributes of weedPresence_id_blm

Detailed descriptions of entity type, attributes, and attribute values for the data.

Description of spatial objects in the data using the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) terminology.

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) terms

weedPresence_id_blm

ESRI feature type: Simple

Geometry type: Polygon

Topology: FALSE

Feature count: 48301

Spatial index: TRUE

Linear referencing: FALSE

SDTS Feature Description

Description of point and vector spatial objects in the data using the Spatial Data Transfer Standards (SDTS) terminology.

Spatial data transfer standard (SDTS) terms

weedPresence_id_blm

Type: G-polygon

Count: 48301

Data Quality and Accuracy Information

General

Information about the fidelity of relationships, data quality and accuracy tests, omissions, selection criteria, generalization, and definitions used to derive the data.

Logical consistency report:

No test or review by resource specialist

Completeness report:

unknown

Attribute Accuracy

Accuracy of the identification of data entities, features and assignment of attribute values.

Attribute accuracy report:

Initial review indicated numerous attribute errors. These include errors used for "common name", National Ownership, and data source. Some attributes such as Genus, species2, species3 were not used.
Attributes have not been reviewed by resource specialist

Positional Accuracy

Accuracy of the positional aspects of the data.

Horizontal accuracy report:

Variable.

Data Source and Process Information

Data Sources

Information about the source data used to construct or derive the data.

Data source information

Data Source 1

Map scale denominator: Variable

Date: unknown Time: unknown

Currentness reference:

publication date

Process Steps

Information about events, parameters, tolerances and techniques applied to construct or derive the data.

Process step information

Process Step 1

Process description:

Prepared (i.e. common coordinate system, buffer points/lines to polygons, convert shapefiles and coverages into GDB feature classes, extract weed-related attributes from datasets containing more than weeds, etc.) various datasets for merge into 'master' Geodatabase (based on National Standards). After merge, populate fields with available values or NULL to National Standards specifications.

Person: Andy Aston

Organization: Gateway Mapping, Inc./J-U-B Engineers

Position: GIS Specialist

Phone: (801)226-0393

Fax: (801)226-0394

Email: aaston@jub.com

Address type: mailing and physical address

Address:

240 W Center Street #200

City: Orem

State or Province: Utah

Postal code: 84057

County: United State of America

Process date: Not complete Process time: Unknown

Process software and version: Unknown

Process Step 2

Process description:

Complete metadata

Organization: BLM, Idaho State Office

Position: Geographic Sciences

Phone: 208-373-4000

Fax: 208-373-3949

Hours of service: 8-4:30 M-F MST

Address type: mailing and physical address

Address:

BLM, Idaho State Office

Address:

1387 South Vinnell Way

City: Boise

State or Province: ID

Postal code: 83709

County: USA

Process date: September 2008 Process time: Variable

Process software and version: ArcGIS 9.2 SP3

ESRI geoprocessing history

Description of ESRI geoprocessing commands, settings, and tolerances applied to the data.

Description of the data known by the party from whom the data may be obtained, liability of party distributing data, and technical capabilities required to use the data.

Distribution liability:

Although these data have been processed successfully on a computer system at the Idaho Geospatial Data Clearinghouse, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the utility of the data on any other system, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

Distribution Point of Contact

Contact information for the individual or organization distributing the data.

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